onerouge
- Jul 15, 2023
- 1 min read

OneRouge Community Check -In - Week 164

Couple of questions for you... Have you ever wondered about the connection of ableism to the patriarchy? Well, to start at the beginning, "ableism and ableist views are ways in which ideas/beliefs are organized and supported that is based on the belief that the ‘able-body’ is favoured/preferred over the disAbled body". This is important because ableism as violence against women has been the subject of several scholarly articles. Have you ever considered how we can consciously parent against misogyny/misogynoir? Well, theories suggest that conscious parenting is the only way we can adequately if not properly address misogyny/misogynoir. Join us this Friday as we hear from experts in the conscious parenting space. The discussion will include stories, tools, and approaches that all of us in South Louisiana can use to support our work with youth and families, in all of their incarnations. our featured speakers:

Natasha Nelson - Supernova Momma and CPDE Certified Positive Discipline Educator
Yolanda Williams - Mother, Conscious Parenting Coach, and Racial Justice Educator

Enlight, Unite, & Ignite!

Quick Links: Notes, Zoom Chat, Community Announcements

Notes

Casey Phillips: Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Good morning. Let's see here. It's a happy Friday, and oh, in particular, it is fantastic to see a few familiar faces, including the newest face of the Walls Project, sporting his OneRouge his OneRouge shirt. May I reintroduce the artist formerly known as Patrick, Dr. Patrick Tuck, now just as P. Tuck the Director of Revenues of the Walls Project. Welcome, Patrick Tuck. Welcome, Patrick Tuck. I see we got Manny Fresh in here, rockin his Mets. Is it diehard thing for you, Mets versus Yankees, or is it just more casual and you like the colors?

Manny Patole: No I'm a diehard. Loyalty and pain all, all over the floor.

Casey Phillips: Cool. So you enjoy professional baseball season.

Manny Patole: I do. It's my fault sometimes.

Casey Phillips: Yeah. Man, look, everyone has to have a time to be able everybody has to have a way to turn their brain off, right? You of all people's brain seems like it works in overdrive and so if it brings you some peace, unfortunately, as a Mets fan, also some anguish dang it, it's great to have the emotional rollercoaster and say at the end of the day, it's not my fault they didn't win.

Manny Patole: I'm more interested in hearing about, doctor Tuck's new role or maybe we'll hear about that later.

Casey Phillips: We will. We will. It is it is a good one. It is a good one and we look forward to seeing you next time. I know we didn't get to share space.

Manny Patole: I'll come down next week. I'll be there on Monday

cool.

Casey Phillips: Consider the casa open and it would be great for a home hang with you and anybody else that is rolling with you in in the town. I just want to welcome everybody to the space. Tristi, good morning to you. Donovan Mr. Johnson, do you mind coming? Are you in the ability to come put your microphone on or even maybe even coming on camera for a second?

You've been showing up with some regularity and I appreciate you engaging in the space and I don't know, maybe it would be great if everybody got to meet you for a second and then we're going to turn it over to our friend Jessica that also entered the space.

Donavan Johnson: Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm Donovan Johnson. I have the pleasure of serving as IX Coordinator at Baton Rouge Community College. Been here for a little over three years now. Thank you. And so I'm happy and excited to be here and to learn of the resources around Baton Rouge that would hopefully enhance student success here at the college.

And so thank you all for the invitation. Awesome.

Casey Phillips: And Mr. Johnson how you and I were originally connected, if memory serves correctly, is around the choice food program, right? That you all will have at BRCC. Do you mind maybe letting everyone know about that? Cause there's folks from the Capital Area Food Equity Coalition that are on the call.

Donavan Johnson: Absolutely. So the store at BRCC, which we have affectionately coined we lifted that name actually from colleagues at Baylor University to hopefully reduce the sometimes a stigma that's associated with food insecurity. So in conversations, members of our campus community can say we're going to the store and one would not be able to distinction between food pantry or say your local Albertsons or Target.

And we've partnered with the greater battle roost food bank. We receive product once a month. They, our campus community goes through their application system, which looks at their monthly income and also their residents. And so through that application process, they're able to access food here on campus.

And then we also partner with other organizations in the community. Most recently, Mid City Church has donated some items. And then our student organizations would put on and host camp food drives and clothing drives. And so looking at a centralized location so that students can Perhaps navigate a little bit more effectively food insecurity and some of those bigger challenges that sort of distract them or will serve otherwise as barriers prohibited them from matriculating and persisting at the college.

And so it's hard to sit in a biology class and do if you do not know which next meal is coming from. And it correlates very well with the demographics of our community. So our average age at BRCC. is about 26 and older. And so we know that population has also competing factors. You may also be a single mother.

You may also work two to three jobs, and then you're trying to advance and change the trajectory of your family. by coming to BRCC part-time. And so if we can, by somehow, some way assist you in feeding you and your family, that's one less thing to check off the to do list so that you can primarily focus on getting here and getting out and earning a high wage, high demand job.

Casey Phillips: right on. Thank you so much for sharing that. And they also say that I appreciate the Zen of your home office that you have set up there. And it is that and just gave me some inspiration for my study that I'll be setting up this weekend. So thank you. Everything's about timing that I appreciate you.

Donavan Johnson: Thanks a lot. This is and we're asking on campus here.

Casey Phillips: Okay.

Donavan Johnson: Yeah. I'm here. Man, I said you you made a good home away from home. Let's say that.

Casey Phillips: Thank you so much Mr. Johnson for being here. And again, folks, sometimes we like to change the format up a little bit. We usually do community announcements towards the back end but we had a couple of important ones and one of those is coming from Miss Jazzika Matthews who will be taking the next 5 minutes. to make everyone aware of in one Rouge of an opportunity to influence the direction. One of the directions the city has taken. And it's coming up on Tuesday, Wednesday. So we wanted to get that space and then we're gonna be turning it over to Pepper and Morgan, who are co-facilitating a powerful conversation today and one that I think everyone is going to benefit from.

So Jazzika, take it away. Please.

Jazzika Matthews: Hello. Good morning. I hope you I'm apologizing now for my having my camera on. It is early for me and I'm not always the best when I'm super early when it comes to my face. I'm smiling at all of you. My name is Jazzika Matthews. I'm the director of programs and operations for Safe, Hopeful, Healthy in the Mayor's Office.

Safe, Hopeful, Healthy is our initiative that addresses gun violence in the city through the lands of public health. And the idea that bringing community in the conversation and the work of public safety is of the most importance. So for the next 90 days we have been charged with developing a comprehensive community-based public safety plan.

This is something that is led by our national cities United. And these plans actually are happening all over the country. And Casey alluded to next week where we are doing something that's called the road map to safe, hopeful, healthy br planning labs that take place on both Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

In 2020 Mayor Broome decided or Mayor Broome officially adopted a public health approach to reducing violence in Baton Rouge. And so we all on this call as practitioners, people who work in all different disciplines understand that there is intersectionality amongst all of our work and violence.

I just heard the gentleman speak about how in his work there, the people that he's dealing with have a myriad of issues that need to be addressed that support them when it comes to their education. The same can be said about victims of gun violence as well as perpetrators of gun violence.

Not only are they dealing with the violent, but the things that affect them and create the violence are all of the issues that most of us work on. So for us, it's important that we come up with a coordinated plan around how all of all agencies, non profits, community leaders work together to address gun violence.

And so during those planning sessions that we will have workshops from national partners as well as time to sit together and really talk about what each of us are doing and map out how we fit on this ecosystem of public safety and how we can be better coordinated in the work that we do. It is a two day.

event. However we're asking people to come when they can really because we understand that folks are really busy. So if you can come the first day on Tuesday, wonderful. If you can make it both days, amazing. But we just want as much input as possible. We have an executive committee that has sent out many requests and many invites.

And we're hoping that those responses will come in and that people will be able to come with their ideas and also there to learn what else is happening. All the things that are happening. Leading our executive committee is Safe BR, Safe Hopeful Healthy BR, The Breeze Center for Hope, Agile Planning Solutions, as well as One Rouge is represented on our executive committee.

And so we are just excited to all come together and I'm inviting everyone in this space to show up with their input and ready to really hit the ground working. We have a very, I say it's aggressive. We have aggressive plan to have this plan inked by October. It needs to actually go.

It needs to be presented by October. So we have less than that to really have it inked. So I'm excited about really getting started and digging into this work and we would love for you all to join us.

Casey Phillips: Awesome. Thank you, Jazzika. I was just making some notes for Tuesday and we messaged out the leadership council for one region are all of our co-chairs to participate and to be a part of that energy. So thank you. Appreciate you very much for sharing. Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your morning.

Turn it over to you.

Pepper Roussel: Good morning all. Before we shift, I do want to bring up that there is a question for Donavan Johnson in the chat and that question is from Reverend Anderson. Is the food pantry a location where students can be connected with other services? If you want to drop the answer on the chat, that's fine.

Or if you want to come off mute and let us know.

Donavan Johnson: With other services, excuse me. Do you have those services in mind that maybe I can speak to? I know that we're rolling out. It's a series, right? So the first was the store and that was to address food insecurity. And then our next phase is to partner with our career closet to create what we are calling the closet.

And so we'll be able to have. clothing for adolescents and the Children of our students and if they need a suit or a pantsuit for an interview, they could frequent that space as well. I hope I'm answering your question. But we actually see other issues come to the surface during those moments where they said, Oh, this is great.

Excuse me. This is great about food. What else can I get here? And then we point students in the direction of our licensed professional counselors on campus, or they may say, I'm also dealing with homelessness. And so we have in conversations with local hotels and close proximity to us that will give us a discount for students to lay their head down until we can connect them with a shelter.

And often in my line of work. That initial extenuating circumstance gives way to other underlying conditions. And then we work both to address those with internal and then external resources. I hope that addresses the question. Reverend Anderson, did you want to qualify? We are going to get started with our program just second.

Rev. Anderson: Oh just very thank you for that clarification. And I just wanted to you did answer my question. I was wondering because and I know Dr Bell's on the call as well, that, for instance, there's an eviction help desk that actually operates out of Baton Rouge City Court. And so I just wondered if in your planning, will there be the opportunity to have these other resources either partnered with the program so students could have access to them or if that information will be provided maybe in that site.

So that's really what I was asking clarification for. So thank you. I think you really did answer my question.

Donavan Johnson: Thank you. And it's certainly an opportunity. It's certainly an opportunity to present other and introduce other resources to students. We've also connected with through Feeding Louisiana from our conversations around food insecurity that organization has received a grant that would allow them to visit sites and perform renewal of Medicaid. So as a dean of students, when you have a student that says, I'm in your sonography program, I'm in your pre-vet med program, and for me to be in this program, I need health insurance.

But now I don't have it. And so sometimes when those problems hit your desk you're calling our lady of the lake, you're calling colleagues at LSU health center, trying to figure out. What's the model for this and then you write those issues down and then you make those connections.

So that, I think that's an example through feeding Louisiana where they have been offered a grant and then they're going to come out and do some renewal Medicaid so that our campus community is fully covered with health insurance. And so if you all have those resources that you believe our campus community can benefit from, that is an area that we, a platform rather, that we can use to introduce external resources to our students and BRCC will be happy to partner in that vein.

Pepper Roussel: Thank you so much. If y'all don't mind, please put your contact information in the chat folks can connect with you or Reverend Anderson, share whatever additional questions you might have in the chat Donavan, if you wouldn't mind dropping your contact information in the chat. so that folks can connect with you on this and other things that might be going on over at BRCC.

That would be wonderful and I really appreciate it. Hey there, hi there, ho there. Thank y'all for being here on this fine Friday morning. You know how much I love y'all spending your Friday mornings with me. We are just getting going. So excited that we are having this conversation that is Morgan's excited to so excited that we're having this conversation and these are conversations that we have never had and we do need to have.

We need to lift these voices and we need to share because as was mentioned by Jessica that all of the work that we are doing, whether it be in a for profit, non profit foundation or just as a general do gooder out there doing the work. We are all being impacted by, thank you, by the things that are left unsaid.

Part of the story arc that we've got going on as we talk about not just individuals who are left without any sort of context and we are only judging them by the immediate Or the immediacy, excuse me, of their actions is to understand that there are familial complications as well as dynamics that do need to be considered.

And so today we are talking about not just parenting and positive discipline, but also how it is that we look at ableism as an arm of violence. that is being wielded by the patriarchy and I love saying those things because it makes me sound smart. Anyways first up on our agenda to hear from on this fine morning is our very own Supernova Mama.

Natasha Nelson, if you wouldn't mind letting us know who you are, what you do, and how we can be involved, I really appreciate it. Your five minutes starts now.

Natasha Nelson: Absolutely. Hello, you handsome and gorgeous lot. My name is Natasha Nelson. I am a veteran. I am a mother of two autistic children. I am a late-diagnosed autistic black woman.

I am many things, but I'm also a certified positive discipline educator. And what I do is I incorporated Larian theory. I incorporate feminist theory Black feminist theory from Bill Hooks. I incorporate post traumatic slave syndrome theory from Dr. Joy DeGruy. I study a lot of different things.

And then I put it together to make positive discipline accessible and relatable to black and neurodivergent families teaching parents and caregivers and teachers and community leaders how to subscribe positive discipline in their practices with children in their area or in their household or in their classroom who are neurodivergent and may not think process and act the same way as the Children, other Children around them and who are black and may not think process is speaking at the same way as the Children that are around them.

I teach courses. I do public speaking like I'm doing now I am currently writing a book and I am very big on social media, which I need to walk away from, but it just keeps pulling me back because that was the, I'm a millennial and that was the first place where my activism started. Started. So I am happy I have a website and I'm sure we'll get all of that information to you all.

I have a course specifically for autistic and ADHD caregiving, parenting or community leading coming up in September. And then I also have an. eight-week course that is specific to teaching the foundations of positive discipline when having neurodivergent or black children. And that it starts in October and ends in November.

And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Pepper Roussel: So before we shift to Yolanda, don't go anywhere. The question that I have, and I just want to level set is what are we talking about when you say positive discipline? I don't even understand, like, how do those things even go together in a sentence?

Natasha Nelson: Absolutely. That's always fun for me. I, being autistic and knowing this now because I didn't know before, but my whole life, I've liked boobs. It's probably why I joined the military. It's why I like standard operations, procedures and rules written out. And so I'm sure you've heard gentle parenting.

You've heard conscious-parenting. You've heard positive-parenting. You've heard all these other things. And the reason positive discipline got me is because they had a criteria for what actually establishes. as positive discipline and I like criteria. So positive discipline has five things that are the criteria that says, okay, this is positive discipline.

So for them, the first one is it respectful to you and the child? They call it kind and firm at the same time. Is it kind? Is that respectful? And that firm is, does it have rules? Does it have boundaries? Does it have consequences? Does it set that child up for the life skills and characteristics they're going to have in future in the world, right?

The next one is, does it give your child a sense of belonging and significance in their community? That community could be in your household, that community could be in the classroom, it could be at your local church, but does that child feel like they belong and are significant in that place? The next one is going to be is it's something that is long-term.

A lot of times we as caregivers, as parents, even as school teachers, we just want to shut that kid up and move on to the lesson, or we're wanting to have them go sit down in a corner somewhere and be quiet or just stop doing what they're doing. And usually, we use short-term things to do that short-term methods.

Short-term punishments, different things like that. And so the idea of positive discipline is this long-term, is this actually teaching them the lesson or is this just getting them to shut up? The next one is, does it teach the life skills and characteristics that you actually want your children to hold?

So are you teaching them what you would want them? things that you would want them to continue to use when they're 25? Are you just teaching them something for right now? Are you teaching them, if someone hits you, you hit them back? Or are you teaching them, hey, we got to problem solve and look at this situation.

What's going to happen to you? What are the rules in this situation? Maybe you run this time, maybe another time you hit back. Life skills and characteristics that you would want your child to hold in the future. And then the last one is it teaching them that they hold full power and capability? A lot of times we don't allow children to make choices.

We don't allow children to do anything and then when we want them to do, we'll say, Oh, no, you're not old enough to wash dishes. Oh, no, you're not old enough to wash dishes. And then I'm saying, you're 12. You need to be washing dishes. Who taught me do it. We don't allow children to realize how capable they are until we need them to be capable and then we yell at them to be capable

So is it showing children that they have the power and capability to be independent and take care of themselves? That is the criteria for positive discipline. It's based off of Edlarian theory from Alfred Adler who was Known as the founder of individual psychology. And for me like I said, cause I like rules, that's why I moved to positive discipline.

So you'll hear a lot of different conscious parenting which I'm also certified in. You'll hear conscious discipline, positive parenting, gentle parenting, all these things. But I tend to move towards positive discipline cuz I like moving.

Pepper Roussel: That is a perfect segue into Yolanda Williams from Parenting Decolonized.

Yolanda, if you wouldn't mind letting us know who you are, what you do, however it is that you are showing up on this fine Friday morning.

Yolanda Williams: Exhausted this fine Friday morning. My daughter slept terribly, oh no! Yes, so that was fun. Hi, good morning. My name is Yolanda Williams and I am the founder of Parenting Decolonized.

What I do is very similar to what Natasha does. But what I try to do with parents is show them how parenting is a vehicle to either indoctrinate our children into systems of oppression or it's a vehicle to help them reject all those things. And I don't, the way that I talk about parenting is really from an activist standpoint, I really want to connect those dots for parents and see how they are either gatekeeping for or investing in the systems of oppression and how they are teaching their child to normalize.

all of the things that are wrong with this country. And so I have conferences. I have one coming up in September. I have a podcast that's a little bit on the hiatus right now, but you can still find all episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts. And I do speaking engagements and I also am all over social media.

Namely Facebook, TikTok and Twitter, where I am very blunt about the fact that we as parents and as adults in general, do not do a good job of showing collective responsibility towards children. And I'm really trying to push adults and parents and caregivers and teachers to start seeing ourselves as good ancestors.

To start looking at ourselves as people who are trying to, who have a collective responsibility to help children be not just good people, but also future good ancestors. So that's me in a nutshell. And I got radicalized into all of this just because I became pregnant at 36. Okay. And I was like, what is parenting?

What are we gonna do? I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I started researching and I found, positive parenting and conscious. I found gentle parenting, but it was so white, like I was going into groups and I was feeling very much attacked whenever I would bring up the nuances of conscious parenting while black in a really anti-black country.

And so I just started my own stuff. I stepped into the gap and was like, I'm going to start a podcast, talk about this. I'm going to start a parenting group, so I have a parenting group that's free on Facebook has about 15, 000 black parents in it right now. Morgan's in it. It really does help people in that group figure out like where do I start?

How do I transition? This is difficult for me and to get the community that we so desperately need to be able to parent this way because culturally it's still something that many of us don't do. Man, I got questions. Ask them. But so here's the thing I want to start with. I love the word radicalized and that is just an aside.

I like saying it. The second thing is, what do you mean when you say that we need to, as the adults in the room, need to start thinking about ourselves as being good ancestors? Because when I think of ancestors, I have a very distinct vision in my head that pops up, right? So what are we saying here?

What are we encouraging? We're encouraging for adults to think a way further into the future. Not just this generation of children that we're raising, but I want to say even 10, 50 generations. Ahead of us and how we are le leaving this world. What are we, what legacy are we leaving for them?

How are we how are we? Like I said, collective responsibility doesn't seem to be a thing anymore when it comes to children. And I feel like that. There's so much venom and loathing of Children. That's very vocal these days. It's very, it sounds like a bunch of eugenicists that are speaking over social media.

The way that people hate children is a mirror to the way that our system, our government systems treat us. So I want folks to start thinking about what are we leaving for these kids? Environmentally, socially, economically, politically, what are we leaving for them? And how, if we start looking into the future, what do we, who do we need to become?

And what do we need to do to be good ancestors, to be people who will collectively care for these children, who will not harm them physically and emotionally and spiritually, just because we're the adults. Who do we need to become in order for them to have a good, a better and brighter future?

I'm still asleep y'all. So if you ask me some questions and I'm fumbling it's because I'm exhausted right now. So tired...

Pepper Roussel: Listen, I don't even have small children at home and I am also not sleeping well, but I think that this has everything to do with other things going on. Anywho. What I hear you saying and correct me if I'm wrong.

What I hear both of you saying is that there's a requirement that as an adult who is responsible for the lives and the upbringing of tiny people that we do our own internal dives and that we also begin our own healing in order to not only parent but steer better so that we are raising or incorporating, encouraging a different way of entering society.

Is that accurate?

Natasha Nelson: Yes. Pretty much have a mind shift. There needs to be a mind shift because the first criteria that I said is it respectful to you and the child? But what is your idea of respect? What does respect even look like to you? Do you feel like respect is someone obeying authority?

Because then you're going to think you are being respectful, even if you're very much being controlling and just telling a child what to do and not giving them any autonomy. If you, your idea of respect is being kind and empathetic to a human being and caring about what they say and listening to them, allowing them to have voice, then your idea of.

Is it kind and respectful to both parties is going to look completely different. So it's a mindset shift. You have to start seeing children as human. And that is very tough for a lot of people to think of children as human beings with feelings and thought processes, not fully developed that prefrontal cortex is not there, but that executive function, not there, but they are still human.

And if you have to start looking at children as humans and a lot of people are not there and it's not like they're not there because they're horrible people. They're not there because we're socializing not to look at you as humans...

Yolanda Williams: Or equals and people hate when I say equals. What makes my daughter not equal to me?

Just are my wisdom that I have with age, my size, like what is it? She's still a human being. We have the same feelings. We have the same rights, kinda. I'm in one of the states where you can still hit children in school. There's 19 states in this, in the country where it's still legal to hit children in school, right?

Imagine if it was legal to hit adults at work. It doesn't make sense. We have these different rules. or how we care for children and what they need in order to grow up and be productive members of society. When really what we're doing is indoctrinating them to be a cog in the machine to make rich people rich and powerful people more powerful.

That's what we're doing whenever we hit a child or we tell them to blindly obey someone. We're not protecting them because if you are protecting a child, you teach them how to be. how to have autonomy, how to speak up for themselves, how to say no, how to tell an adult I don't like the way you're speaking to me.

I don't like the way you're touching me. But what we do is we tell children, they don't have a voice. So we open them up for predation. We open them up for abuse by adults. And usually it's adults that they know and trust. So we're not doing a good job societally of protecting children of showing them that they matter.

Because like Natasha said, like we were supposed to be helping them become adults and live in this world, but really we're just teaching them how to stay within this like childlike mind frame. Never question anything. There's no critical thinking, and then when they show a modicum of critical thinking, they're punished for it in the home.

The home is supposed to be a training ground for where they get. They get to say no, where they learn how to speak to people. Conflict resolution. You know what love is, what friendship is. But a lot of us still operate on that whole, I'm not your little friend, you, I'm up here, you're down here. And that hierarchy, that parent-child or an adult child hierarchy is very dangerous because it gives it, again, it mirrors systemic hierarchies, right?

Because then it gives the people on top the right or whatever the word is to abuse people on the bottom.

Natasha Nelson: And adding to that, we, children are the last people to get any type of rights. If you look like they're really the last people to get any type of rights. They are the most oppressed because Our society has started obtaining rights and started changing, women have started getting more rights, different minorities have started getting more rights even though we're going backwards a little bit, even people with different identities, sexual identities, gender identities are starting to get more looks in the laws and rights, but children's rights?

I don't, I think there's a U. N. Cabinet or something where they asked the U. S. to sign just to have children rights unitedly for the world and we still, as the United States, have not signed up. It's, and so when you think about how we want equity and we want equality that's gonna have to start in the household and in order for that to start, you can't have the superior and inferior positioning this hierarchy in the household.

You have to have horizontal collaborative leadership in your household in order to facilitate that happening out in the world.

Yolanda Williams: And if you think about our children, they teach us all the time. I know you can, our children teach us. We both have autistic children. I have adult ADHD. She teaches me all the time.

We are learning from each other and it's in different ways. It's not necessarily a reciprocal thing, right? She, I say to parents all the time when they start this journey, what is your why? Why do you even want to parent this way? Because I feel like you need something that's going to keep you going when the going gets tough because it's hard, okay?

This is not easy work. So my parenting why is that I want my daughter and I to be friends when she's I want her to consider me a friend. I don't consider my mother a friend. We're not close like that. We still talk. We have the typical, I think, mother-daughter relationship. When you were raised with a very southern, really harsh background.

We're not close. I don't know her. She doesn't really know me. I don't want that for my daughter and I. So my why is I want her to be my friend, for us to, go on adventures together, for us to go grab a drink, she can call me, whatever, right? So it's I have to ask myself, who do I need to become in order to be that person?

That means I need to be her friend. Now. I need to show her what true friendship feels like and sounds like right now. I need to show her what loyalty is now. I need to show her what respect is now. I can't just wait till they turn 18 and be like, all right, then let's be friends now. Why don't you call me no more?

I don't like you. You haven't been a good person to me. And I think a lot of parents Don't, they don't consider themselves even persons anymore because their children are looking at them and they're listening to them, and they're wondering why when you, when they get hit, when they're be being told to not hit somebody, they're wondering why their parents are hypocrites and they lose respect for them.

And then when they get older and they have the choice. whether or not they want to be around their parents and they choose not to. It's confusion town. What did I do? I raised you. You were not a good person. So we need to be good people to our parents to our children. And we, a lot of us are doting descendants, but we're not good ancestors.

We, we worry about the people, our parents and our grandparents, and we treat them with so much respect, but we're not good people to our children. We started hitting kids at 18 months old, a lot of us. When they're learning and growing and their brains are developing. Be the people, is all I'm saying.

I need some coffee. Am I able to go offline and get some coffee?

Pepper Roussel: Yeah, oh, wait. Yes, please. Please go get the coffee. Please. We will wait for you to come back. Morgan.

Morgan Udoh: Yeah, I know you told me to tag in with questions. So I had a question. to come back, she can answer that as well. Do you have any personal examples, Natasha, of the children that you work with or the parents that you work with and their children of how this change in thinking can dismantle oppressive thinking from adolescents up. Examples of misogyny or, okay. Go for it. We wanna hear.

Natasha Nelson: So I parent two children. They're both autistic.

One is minimum speaking, one is hyper-verbal, hypoxic, hyper-everything, and Just the other day my daughter went on a play date and I went back and forth. There are neighbors, their children come to our house all the time, but we are very scared about doing it the other way because we practice positive discipline because the girls are autistic and different things like that.

But I allowed it because again, I don't want to envelope her in this whole.

What's the word safe haven where she doesn't get to experience the real world and learn the capabilities in the real world So she went on a playdate for 30 minutes. I got a call She was having a meltdown and when I got there, it was discovered that children which what children do they had started fighting and when they had started fighting that adult had come and started yelling very loudly and it had ruined the whole thing because my daughter is not used to adults yelling and to stop a misbehavior between children and my daughter just completely melted down and freaked out.

And so when I got there, the first thing that I did is dropped down to my knees and helped regulate my child. So I'm helping her breathe. I'm helping her count. I'm helping her get where she needs to be. And then I asked her what happened and adults were trying to interrupt her when she was telling me what happened.

I looked at them very calmly. I said, I know I'm asking her and then I went back to asking my daughter what happened. She explained what her perspective was and then I allowed the other children to tell me what happened and other children and then I asked the adult what happened and I already know she was looking at me funny, but I don't care.

I did that for a reason. When the adult she collaborated the story she explained that she yelled and everything and then Riley said right there in front of everybody and mommy I apologize for hitting but she didn't say sorry for yelling at me And she's not allowed to yell at people like that.

Nobody should yell Everybody's gonna get crazy. I said, yeah, you're right Riley, but I can't make her apologize. I can tell her That no one's allowed to yell at each other and that there are other ways to calm people down when people make a mistake. But that's up for her to choose. And a woman, of course, didn't apologize.

And I think we both left there knowing Riley wasn't gonna come back on the f ing date again. But, my children, and it happens all the time, my child calls me Tasha. We have been in places in the grocery store where someone's been like, is that your mommy? She's, "Yes, that's my mommy. That's my mommy, Tasha. Tasha, look at this." And they look at me crazy. And I'm like, is my name not Tasha?

She calls me mommy sometimes. Sometimes she calls me Tasha. She's also autistic. And everyone else calls me Tasha. And so it's probably easier for her brain to register in calling me Tasha. It just makes sense. But in my household, mama would slap me to Timbuktu if I had said her real name, instead of calling her mom.

That wouldn't even it wouldn't even if I wasn't doing it maliciously or anything, she'd be like, who are you talking to? I'd at least got the look. Y'all know the look of death. And but it's, once you live these principles, you seriously, I had to, when she first started calling me mom, because I am a black mother, I did have a flinch a little bit.

I had a cringe. Like, when she started calling me Tasha, I was like, what is this, ugh. But then I was like, I had to sit and be like, is it important for her to call me mom? And if so, why? Because if it is, I want to communicate that to her because we want people to be referred to what they prefer. But, is it important for her to call me mom?

And why? So I had to sit with why that's important to me. And I think a lot of the things we do as parents, We don't even think about why. We just do because our parents did it and the next parents did and the other parents do it. So we continue to do it and so conscious parent is almost like just thinking about why you're doing what you're doing.

Is that important to you? Not to everybody else but to you. Do you even care about that? And if so, how do you explain that you would care about that to your child without having to hit them and yell at them?

Yolanda Williams: Morgan, I missed the question.

Morgan Udoh: Yeah. Yolanda, it was give examples of how this thinking can dismantle oppressive thinking from adolescents up. Thinking of your interaction with your children and other children and maybe people that you're coaching from the group. How are we, a lot of coaching there.

How parenting in this way can dismantle those systems of oppression. How you've seen that happen in real-time.

Yolanda Williams: What I've seen is the people close to me. I, so I'm formed. The reason that I showed up as black femme freedom collective on this thing here is because I'm forming an intentional community with other black moms in Georgia.

And we get together and we, I get to see the fruits of everybody's labor. So Damari Dickinson is also a parenting coach. And so is Chrissy from Chrissy's Couch. And we're all trying to form this community and their kids. So my child is. Like she said, she's five. She's autistic and she doesn't speak a whole lot of words.

Right now when it comes to the parenting, it's really all about the conscious parenting is all about me. Dismantling oppressive systems is all about me doing that internally. And so I don't have very many anecdotes as far as like my own personal life, because it's all about me going into a closet and fighting air instead of.

hurting my child when I'm upset. Like that's where I'm at. I am, this has been very, very difficult thing for me to undo all the trauma, all the generational trauma that is coming up as I do this healing work because it is almost like a healing work is grief work. You realize how much of your, how much You weren't given when you were a child and it hurts to start doing that work.

So that's where I'm at. I am learning how to control my emotions because I wasn't taught, you realize you weren't taught a lot when you do this work. And so I'm learning how to control my emotions, how to regulate better, and how to pause before reacting. And I love being around people who have been in this longer than I have because I get to see, it's so hard for me, I'm in it.

And it's so hard for me that I need reminders all the time. Like it's going to get easier. It's going to get better. It's it there's there's ebbs and flows because I'm in the thick of it of me trying to undo some stuff the program. And so being around them and seeing how their Children are so safe with saying how they feel with being able to learn because they're unschoolers being able to learn in a way that is best for them, being able to express themselves openly, being able to like just be children. I'm not used to being around children outside of my little circle that are just able to be kids. And it is a beautiful thing because especially black children are adultified, especially black girls are adultified. There's no one around them doing that.

So they're able to wear what they want to wear. speak how they want to speak. No one is telling them that to use proper English. Like, it is just a beautiful thing when we let children just be children. And even in just me doing this work internally, I know that it's dismantling some systems because when we parent in violent ways and oppressive ways, we are just reinforcing oppression.

We're just normalizing it, right? So just any parent doing this work. even though you might mess up a lot as I do, you are still helping to dismantle systems of oppression, and culturally and in your relationships. Now we hope that what we're doing is we're raising Children who will help dismantle this at a systemic level because we show me doing it.

But we, that's my hope is that she will be somebody who's So not used to being abused that when the government is abusive or a friend is abusive or anybody else is abusive, she's able to call them on it. I feel like what we're doing is work at a cultural level and a personal level that will help raise people who will change things at a societal level.

Morgan Udoh: Follow up. How can the structure of communication relationship be used as a resource for educators, mentors, and public servants? You spoke about how we're intentionally raising them outside of violent structures so that they enter in the world and will either combat those violent structures or do not continue those violent structures.

So how is this way of interacting with the children that we're in charge of? How can it be a resource for people who aren't parents?

Natasha Nelson: It takes a village. Yeah. It literally takes a village. Like children, everyone is a, I don't want to say suppose, I hate shoulda, coulda, woulda, but the idea of a society is that everyone is a part of that society and contributes to that society and cares for that society. So I agree.

Everyone is interacting with your children. The teachers are interacting with your children. The neighbors are interacting with your children. Everyone should have the ideas of how to interact, love, nurture children. Even if you, and if that's not your jam, you're still going to see the orange public transportation do different things around children.

And so having the understanding and knowledge that children are humans of how to deescalate of how child development works is important information that radicalizes our entire society to be more of a community instead of this rampant individualism that we've had, where if I don't like kids, I don't want kids.

I don't have to know anything about kids, but you're going, kids, unless you're a hermit sitting in your room. every day because they are humans and they are everywhere. And so it does take a village, everything from the pastor to the school teacher to the social workers to the, to just the public transportation person, you are interacting with children and not just children.

You are interacting with disabled children. And so therefore you should have some type of knowledge and understanding on how to dismantle your old ideas and on how to be and how to be accessible and supportive to Children and disabled children around you.

Yolanda Williams: Yeah, like I said, we as adults, we make a choice every day.

Children don't make this choice because they're under our care. But every day we make a choice as to whether we're gatekeeping for an investing in systemic oppression and systems of oppression. And the way that we interact with Children is a big part of that, but also how we interact with each other.

And, at this point we are so like America, North America, the United States is like a really abusive parent that you really still depend on weight, but you have to depend on because you live under their roof, but that you're always like, I can't wait. So I get grown and get away from them. That's how I feel like we all are. But my whole thing is. If we learn to decrease our dependence on these systems of oppression, then it loses some of that power and how do we do that? It is, it starts in our homes. It starts with our children, but it starts with ourselves, our children, and how we operate in our homes and with our community.

There, there is no liberation without it. And if we want to be to have a world that isn't so oppressive. We have to be more community-minded. We have to care about each other. We have to care about children that aren't ours. We have to care about people that we don't even know. And that's difficult because as we can see the discourse, online, everything is so negative.

Everybody got a snarky comment. People don't know how to communicate. And I really believe if you look online and you look at how we interact with each other online, it really is like a microcosm for how we interact with each other just in general and how disconnected we are from each other.

The disconnection is the problem. So the more connected we are, the more community-minded we are, the less dependent we become on systems of oppression. But we can't do that if we, yes, artists, Alexis, we can't do that if we are so in our silos this is my home. It's none of your business how I raise my kid.

And I always tell people The way that we parent is collective work. There's nothing personal about it because when your child leaves his house, they got to interact with me and mine, right? So if you are raising someone who is violent, who doesn't understand boundaries, who doesn't know how to communicate or resolve any conflicts, I got a problem with that as a community member.

And I, I may not be able to go on your house and be like, stop hitting, keep your hands off that baby. I can't do that. But what I can do is talk to y'all on social media and be like this. Do you want to continue? If you look outside your window, would you be like traditional old-school parenting is a success.

We're all thriving. Like it's not, we are the way that we parent our children is really it really helps indoctrinate them into what is going on in systems in the world. Or it can, Dismantle them. So I went all over the place with that, but we just need to care collectively care about each other, but especially Children.

It really does take a village and also with the whole nuclear family thing. Even two people is still not enough to raise children because parents are not supposed to be a child's everything. That's why coaches matter. That's why mentors matter. That's why teachers matter. They are community members, right?

So if I don't know something, I should be able to depend on my community member to teach my child that thing. I can't know everything and I can't do everything. I'm already exhausted. I got bags under my eyes. Okay. So I need community members that will help me and I help them in whatever way possible so we can help each other and again, decrease dependence on these systems.

So the less we depend on the systems, the less powerful they are.

Morgan Udoh: One more question?

So I'm hearing this. Hinted in the language that it were sometimes we're often reparenting ourselves while going through this process and figuring out the things that don't align with our values in our language so that we can adjust to ensure that we're properly teaching those values to the next generation.

But is there any space for this work with adults? Because I find myself Reparenting my parents and gentle parenting my parents around boundaries that they do not have with the rest of our family and being hard on themselves, their sense of self, their inner voice, and they don't realize that I'm doing it.

But I'm seeing growth and, those moments in them where they're like, Oh, why do I do that? Can you give examples of that? of how we can gentle-parent, conscious-parent, and positive-discipline the adults in the room to be a happier, more healed selves.

Natasha Nelson: So this is another reason why I go to positive discipline because they do this.

They have positive discipline for in the workplace. They have positive discipline for couples. They have, so they, but I always just say as soon as you start doing that general mindset and you start shifting, You are going to start practicing the things with everyone. It's not something that you can just practice with a child.

You immediately start practicing it with everyone because it's a mindset shift. So my biggest ones that I always say is misbehavior is communicating unmet needs. for everyone. And mistakes are learning opportunities for everyone. And so once I adopt those ideas, when someone is acting out, I say acting out instead of misbehavior for adults, cause they don't like it when I say they're misbehaving.

So when someone is acting out, they usually have an unmet need. And so instead of what I used to do back in the day before all this training and go. They done lost they mind. They trippin' I'm finna get out of here. I'll now go. Oh, I wonder if they need anything and I'm willing to help because I realized the misbehavior is an unmet need.

Now, if I offer to help and they still going crazy, now I'm going to say, oh, they tripping off and put up my batteries and get out of here. But you live this life when people make mistakes. I used to, oh, you can't, I can't believe you did that. That's horrible. Shame, judgment shame. And now I'm like.

"Oh it was a mistake. Let's problem-solve. How are you feeling? Let's figure this out and move forward." So I interact with my partner, with my mother, with different people, the same way I interact with my Children from the training I've got from positive discipline. And in doing that, I have seen amazing results.

The first thing I always people ask me, how do you, your family members, people who are still practicing traditional parenting, how do you tell them or teach them about positive discipline? I said, do it to All the time. When they're experiencing it, and they're seeing my children, and seeing me do it with my children, and seeing the results of my children, that's more likely to get them than me coming and lecturing.

And your children is horrible, and you're all abusive parents, and you can't... If I come that way, their ears shut off. And that's the same way with children. If you come to your children and you're lecturing them about what they're doing, and how they need to do it, and what you think is better, their ears shut off.

So I apply positive discipline to them and then that shifts their mindset automatically because I'm doing the practices. I'm modeling same way we want our parents to. What I would like for them to come and what I would like to receive from them, basically.

Yolanda Williams: Yeah, I think a big part of interacting with any, with especially people in my family has been boundaries.

And since they didn't teach anybody no boundaries, they don't have any of themselves. And I realized that I realized some of the pushback that I get is really just, I don't want to call it jealousy. But what it is if you've never if you allow people in your life to trample over your boundaries, And you have allowed your mother and your elders to treat you like trash.

And then your child comes along and they're like, no, you can't treat me like this. There's some resistance there that comes up. And my mom and I have been going through it because, at one point, it was like a month ago, she was on the block list. She was blocked. She called my number from a private number.

It was just like, are we still, because I told her, I was like, I need a break from you. I can't do this anymore. I don't like the way you're treating me. You don't respect me. And this is after talking to her multiple times that I had to finally just disconnect from her for my own mental health.

Boundaries are to protect you, right? They're not to control others. And so in, in letting her know you can't speak to me this way. You can't treat me this way. I had to block her for a while. And when she called me and she was like, Are we still working our relationship? I was like, are you still blocked?

The answer is yes until, you know how, until you treat me better. Like I don't feel the need to do this with you. And we talked through it. And I'm not someone I think there is right now in, in this elder millennial slash into the millennial Gen Z people who are just like, they're done. I don't, if you don't treat me with respect, I'm not talking to you.

And I think that's also harmful. We do need to, we have to, I, part of my work is understanding generational trauma and understanding that my mother's generation, which is the boomer generation, she was parented by the silent generation. Lots of trauma there. Lots of trauma up in there. Okay. And whenever people speak about the boomer generation, they do not include black boomers who did not get all the good stuff that the white boomers got, right?

They got a lot of the, they got a lot of secrets. They got a lot of a lot of race, racial discrimination, but they did not get all of the economical and financial legs up like white boomers did. So she was parented. in the south in Arkansas by two really abusive people who were also abused by their parents.

And so understanding those generational sort of, things that we need to work through, I can have more empathy for that while still holding boundaries. I can say, I see my mother, I see that she it's basically a wound time. It's like I'm deal sometimes when I'm speaking no emotional regulation. to talk to her almost as my 16-year-old niece and she's able to even hear and understand.

She's very smart and everything else, but emotionally she was never taught any of that stuff that I am learning for myself. And so I am learning to be more patient with her and patient with the process that she's going through. I've seen growth because instead of me yelling at her, like Tasha said, instead of me yelling and telling her what she's not going to do with my kid, I just put up a silent, I told all of my family, listen, I understand that we...

What we did in our family, how we raise children. I'm not doing that with Gia, sat them down and talk to them and let them know, not even me. I'm not even putting my hands on my child. So you're definitely not going to do it. And so we, they struggled with it a lot. At first they struggled with the fact that my child is a wild child compared to every other child that, we've been around that.

I let her do things that they're looking at me like why are you letting her? Because she's fine. Yeah. Because I'm a mother and she's fine. Like I'm not saying nothing. You don't have to say anything. So they've had to learn how to not speak, how not to say certain things about her being autistic, about her hair, all these different things.

And this is just me modeling to them. Sometimes I have to go out and say something, but I still say it in kindness, right? I don't yell at them because I don't want to tell them not to yell at her. And yell at them. It does. I don't wanna be a hypocrite. So all that to say I am learning that we have, we do have to look at the past.

We've have to understand generational trauma and family dynamics and how our family members have been indoctrinated and socialized and to these systems hardcore. Those previous generations were and now having empathy for that, having empathy for the fact that they, my mother was never a child.

She never got to be a child. And so we can, I can look at that and be like, okay, she just needs some help. I'm doing some of this work. Maybe she can come alongside me and do the work with me. So that's where we're at. And I feel like conscious parenting really helps you humanize people. It helps you humanize the experience of parenting.

Everything is so messy. Okay. and you are able to say this is messy and I made a mistake and tomorrow I'll be better or the next hour I'll be better and you're not just like shame. Oh, you're a bad parent. I feel like gentle parenting has a lot of shame in it. It makes you feel like if you're not doing it perfectly, you're not you're not a good parent.

You don't want this bad enough and it's girl, get out of here. I'm a conscious parent because I have to be conscious of myself and I'm not that all the time.

Natasha Nelson: And I think gentle parenting still has some of the fields of white supremacy, that perfectionalism. And that's just not where you can be as a parent of a, any minority child of any disabled child of any gender child that isn't male.

So it limits you. If you're looking at perfectionism, and that's not just from your children, not just from yourself, but from the people around you, people are living lives in different experiences. And those experiences are going to dictate how they react, what, where their emotional intelligence is, where their problem solving is, where they're critical.

All of those things are part of that. And if you're not being empathetic and aware of those things in other people, and only your children. Then you're not really teaching your Children how to access the world, how to navigate the world. You're teaching them how to navigate your home and that's it.

Yolanda Williams: And I want to address what Ava said here.

There's a lot of single parents raising Children who are overwhelmed with day to day living and are projecting a lot of harm on their Children. Me. Okay. So that's where the consciousness comes in. Because as a solo parent, I'm just single solo parent. I, it's difficult. I have ADHD. I already wake up with 10 less spoons and everybody else.

My, I'm exhausted from not sleeping for six years. Also, I'm a single parent. Also, the house is messy. Everybody got to eat. You got to eat again. There's always you got to eat something every day, right? So there's all these responsibilities and the consciousness comes in and recognizing that I cannot do everything, that some things are going to have to go by the wayside.

And also that there is privilege in this type of parenting. Because if you are unwilling to recognize you're the different privileges that you have, even though I am a black woman who is technically disabled and a single parent, I still have privilege. I can sit here with you guys and choose what I want to do every single day.

I have privilege of time, right? And that has allowed me to be a good community member because when my people need help, I'm able to be there because I have the privilege of time. And I tell people that and they want to push back on me because they only see privilege as race or class. but it's so much more than that.

If you have almost everything you need, this type of parenting can be a little bit easier for you because you're not, you don't have all the pressures of the system on your back all the time and you have help having two people in a household is helpful, but there still needs to be more than two people in, in, in the community that can help, help tag in.

So I just wanted to address that. The harm, the reason why Okay. single parents specifically find this so difficult is because they're exhausted and after your brain is conscious for so long, it just starts to, you can't make good choices after a while. That's why I say my conscious parenting at nine o'clock, it just leaves my body.

I'm like, where did it go? Because I'm exhausted at nine o'clock. I'm like, you got to go to bed sis, because I'm, I can't do this with you anymore. And I know that I'm conscious of that. So that means I have to then be like, okay, what's the plan? Okay. If I'm not, if I'm almost incapable of being a good parent after nine o'clock, what do I need to do?

And that's the mindset of a conscious parent. You know yourself and you don't shame yourself because of it though.

Natasha Nelson: And adding in the ableism aspects of that because as Yolanda said, she has ADHD. I have autism. I know I have autism. My children have autism. So being realistic and honest in Who we are and what our support needs are not trying to make us do something else, meaning I am awful with executive function.

I hate emails. I hate the I hate him so much. And being honest about that. And so looking to maybe like I am currently looking for a secretary, a digital virtual secretary to do those things for me because I'm just Not the best with those. And if I want my business to thrive, that's something that I'm going to have to look at because if I see a lot of emails, I will avoid it until the computer closes and I go lay in bed.

I'm just like, them emails, let me answer them tomorrow and then don't answer them tomorrow. I know I have to have routine. I have to have alarms. I have to have reminders. If I don't have those things. It is going to fall to the wayside. And what I see parents doing is, Oh, I don't need that. If I need that, then I'm not a good parent.

It's okay to need support for you. And it's okay to need support for your children. It's okay that you have a child who bounces off the walls. Give them a room with walls they can bounce on.

Yolanda Williams: And what your describing with that resistance ther another example of toxic say that you don't need t your way into doing somet literally can't do is abl indicative of a capitalis society that tells you to push through, just push through, you're sick, go to work anyway.

You just lost a parent, you got three days to grieve. That's it's the same mentality that we put it into our homes and we indoctrinate our kids into it and then they leave the world doing the same stuff that we say that we don't want anymore. So we just have to be aware of how the systems of oppression are showing up.

In our families and stop doing them as best as possible. It's very difficult because when you're born into it, it's the water, not the shark, right? So you are swimming in it. You're breathing it. So it just is. That's again the consciousness of I can't do this. I have every three weeks. I have someone coming here and clean.

My sister walked in one time was just like, apologize to the woman. I'm sorry. My sister even had to hire you. I'm just like, I'm paying everybody to get paid. What is she talking about? It's her job. I need help with cleaning. I have someone, I dropped my laundry off because I don't want to do laundry like that.

I don't have a washing machine. I'm not going to spend my day doing laundry. I know I don't like it and I know I'm not good at it. I know them clothes will just sit there. So I dropped that off. Like outsourcing and delegating and doing the things you need to do to be able to reclaim some of your time from capitalism and from care tasks. It's so important. Like we are, we don't have to always be doing something. It's okay to sit around and literally do nothing or play but we feel like we have to be, oh, I'm not working now or let me go clean the kitchen. Sometimes, I'm dishes be sitting there and I'm just like, I'm not knowing it and you can't make me because I'm tired and I'm not gonna force my way through this because I'm exhausted and I need to listen to my body and sit down right now.

Natasha Nelson: And if you don't listen to your body, that's where the survival brain comes in and it's regulation. And then you're losing that conscious and positive parenting, networking, nurturing, you're losing it because I have been there. I've been I need to be the perfect mom and I need to be the perfect housekeeper and I need to be the perfect this and that.

And you're running on fumes. And I used to say, oh, I thrive in chaos. No. I was surviving in chaos. And it was not pretty when that meltdown happened. Every time. And I just thought it was normal to have a meltdown every quarter. Because that's what people who are go getters and who do everything perfect do.

Yolanda Williams: No. And I was also getting sick. I was physically getting sick. I think it was 2021. I was sick for the majority of like for a half the year and it was my body telling me to sit down somewhere get some rest because I was exhausted and I was continuing to push through that. So how good a parent you think I was as a single parent who was sick all the time and could only really just lay on the couch and watch TV because I had no energy.

I could barely move. I wasn't a very good parent during that time. So just being conscious of our body and what it needs allows us to, again, reclaim time, but also reclaim ourselves and be better parents.

Natasha Nelson: And that's why I say, in you, misbehavior is communicating and I'm at need. Because when you're losing your temper at children, when you're making mistakes, when you're You have unmet needs, and you gotta stop, take a minute, and listen to yourself, and figure out what your needs are, and get them met, so that you can still fill in the cups of your children, or the children around you, or the community around you, because even as a a supervisor, you can have unmet needs.

And start acting out and hurting your employees or the people on your team and realizing oh, I'm lashing out. I need to take care of myself and then repair those relationships and move forward. Absolutely. Morgan, I see your hand is raised. We just started talking. Me and Yolanda can talk all day. We can talk all day.

So y'all be careful.

Morgan Udoh: No, I love it. I love it. No, I'm just going to anecdotally say that someone who has ADHD and there's a, what are they, what have I read recently? It's like a 90% not nature versus nurture, like nature. of reoccurrence that your children are likely going to be ADHD as well.

And dealing with my toddler who gets the zoomies at the end of the day, I could just holler at her. And sometimes I want to because I also have six month olds. But instead, I now have a toolkit of things that I practice with myself and with her. Oh, it looks like you really need to move your body.

So let's go climb the stairs. And, or let's go jump on the bed, her bed upstairs cause it's a floor bed. And then I'm providing connection to her media need instead of flying off the handle and we're disconnected. And now I got to apologize later for something that she could not control because she's literally three.

I'm big fan of this way of thinking. And also with adults. When we have big events coming up and people are riled up and they're anxious about things that need to happen or haven't happened, and I feel that I see that in them, I feel that in them, telling them, hey, do you need to take a break?

I can handle this. It looks like things aren't going right. What do you need in this moment? It definitely helps de escalate conflict.

Natasha Nelson: Yeah, yes, absolutely. We call sensory is my jam and it could because it, it makes up so much when it comes to neurodivergent people, but honestly just people, period.

Because I've been looking at some of my friends, I'm like, I don't think you're neurodivergent, but you still get overwhelmed by too much audio, too much noise or things happening. But I pay so much attention to it now, especially because everybody in my house is neurodivergent and Especially those internal senses that no one talks about, like movement, needing to move the idea of when you eat, and how you eat, and when you need to go to the restroom, and even how your body temperature regulates, because some of us, It's me.

Our body doesn't regulate on it. So we have hot flashes at the age of 25.

And so those different things, all of that has to do with your sensory, how your body is processing the world around you. And so what I tell people all the time is if that's how your brain processes the world, why are you trying to change your brain instead of just supporting yourself and changing your world?

It's going to be a lot easier to support yourself. and change the world around you. Then it is to just change your brain. I'm just, let's be smarter not harder. And so sensory diets, my child. Harris has a stability ball in her room, she has mats to crash into, we have a bump bed so she can climb up to the bump bed and crash down because she gets the zoomies and they are some zoomies.

She gets the zoomie and boomies, that's what that is, and before bed she needs to get that energy out. And if you don't allow her to get that energy out she will not go to sleep because her body needs it. It is a sense. sensory. She needs to get that movement out. Her body is seeking that movement. I give it to her.

If I don't give it to her, I'm gonna be frustrated. She's still not a bed at 10 o'clock and I'm like, please go to sleep. I have to do things. Being mindful of what your children need or what the children around you need. and what you need. So if you see a child who is very talkative, realizing that they may be attention seeking, or maybe people don't talk to them and where they are at home, right?

If you're seeing a child who seems to always be in a negative attitude, helping them through negative emotions, talking to them about identifying their feelings and asking them if there's something that they would like to do, giving them choices. If we're seeing these things. Instead of ignoring them like we normally do, or getting frustrated with the child and telling them to go to the timeout space or the quiet space out of your face.

Helping them to build life skills and characteristics for long term thinking about our being the ancestors as opposed to being the lineage that's in for we are the ancestors. And how do we want these Children to go for because they other people say they're going to be taking care of me. I'm paying long term care.

So my Children don't have to worry about taking care of me, but they are going to be taking care of this world. And I would like for them to have a much better place of living than we lived in.

Pepper Roussel: That is a great place to end. Thank you so much, Tasha. There is one question in the chat if y'all could If anybody knows the answer to the question, are there any resources or communities for a newer divergent black women in the capital?

Oh, all right. Morgan's already on it. In Baton Rouge area. Thank you all so much for being with us today. Thank you for staying long. When the conversation's good, I don't want to break in and stop it. Anybody who's got any Thank you. Anybody who's got any community announcements, if y'all throw those in the chat, I've seen some already.

And again, thank y'all so much to the speakers and everybody who stayed long with us today. We are over time. So thank you again. And go forth and be great. We'll see you back this time next same. That time same bat channel. Next Friday, we'll be talking more about eradicating poverty.

Have a great weekend, y'all.